Courses

Planners have long imagined themselves as physicians attending to the good health of cities and the communities living in them. Do No Harm unpacks the complex connections between environmental health, public health, and city planning. The course title, a nod to both the Hippocratic Oath and the creed of social reformer Florence Nightingale, represents a challenge to students preparing to manage the discrete, conflicting interests of that most complex of organisms–the metropolis. 

This class uses housing as a starting point for a sectional slice of inquiry that spans from the underground to the air that surrounds us. We will discuss how the design, policy, geography, ownership model, and maintenance of housing influence various public and environmental health metrics, and what levers are available to planners to influence those outcomes. We will explore and evaluate tools of assessment and intervention and identify points of leverage. Within this framework, students are expected to bring their own interests, disciplines, and experience to bear on a semester where our focus will range from affordable and simple tools at the housing-health nexus (smoke detectors, mosquito nets) to more complicated questions of ethics, objectives, and priorities. 

Together we’ll consider the nexus between health and planning as an ongoing process of experimentation, monitoring, learning, and adaptation, with the aim of constantly improving the conditions that promote health for all populations, but with a particular focus on improvements that alleviate the inequities currently experienced by segregated and disinvested communities around the world.

The class will be divided into two streams–input and action. In the input part of the class students will study famous and infamous stories about how our decisions can harm or heal communities, such as Haussmannian hygienist efforts in France, the rise of air-conditioning in Global South cities, or slum clearance in the United States. In the action component groups of students will develop an approach to addressing a real problem in a real place, using housing as a lever for better health. These may be speculative or tailored for a client who works at this nexus between planning and health (the Parisian Roofscapes). These outputs may take the form of written reports, graphic visualizations, or creative endeavors which students will refine and pitch at midterm and final presentations.  

We’ll ask: What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Can physical design and planning alone improve health? In a world of finite resources, how do we weigh competing priorities and evaluate the costs and benefits of our interventions? Do we need values systems to guide or restrain technocratic evidence-based approaches? Where are the limits of our responsibility for health outcomes in our jurisdictions? 

This course will equip you with the understanding, vocabulary, and tools you need to make health a part of your future practice, whether you become a housing advocate, a land use planner, a developer, an urban designer, a transportation planner, or some other role entirely. For those who come from the world of public health and environmental policy, you will gain new insight into the powers and politics that enable and constrain planners, architects, and other practitioners in the city.

The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 10th. It will meet regularly thereafter. 

The connections between health, well-being, and place are complex. This class uses COVID-19 as a starting point for examining how to make healthier places. It examines the health situation in different kinds of places and among key population groups. It explores how to assess environments and how to make changes that reflect knowledge from multiple disciplines and from local people.
 
The class will be divided into two streams—input and action. In the input part of the class students will engage readings, interact with authors, and discuss ideas. In the action component individuals and groups of students will develop an approach to improving well-being and health in places. These projects may engage clients or be more speculative.
 
Throughout the class students will also reflect on some larger questions. Can the ways that places are planned and designed improve health? What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Does the work of incorporating health issues into planning and design processes always add value? Is evidence-based practice really an improvement over business-as-usual? What is the relationship between the different approaches to incorporating health into planning and design practice: health assessments, built projects, regulations and policies, interagency coordination, and programs to change how places are used?
 
By the end of the course a student will be able to:
– Recognize the many determinants of health including, but not limited to, built environments.
– Understand, analyze, and evaluate research related to health and places.
– Comprehend the potentials and limitations of using research to create evidence-based interventions.
– Appreciate the roles of different disciplines, and of local knowledge, in working on issues connecting health and places.
– Identify points of leverage in designing and regulating the physical built environment, creating policies related to how it is used, and developing programs set in the built environment.
– Use tools for assessing environments and for creating healthier places.
– Articulate their own perspective on the relationship between health and place.

Note: the instructor will offer live course presentations on 08/31, and/or 09/01. To access the detailed schedule and Zoom links, please visit the Live Course Presentations Website.

This course investigates the interactions between humans and buildings with a focus on environmental sustainability and health. The exploration will fall into three categories:

• How do humans interact with buildings, especially how does occupant behavior impact building performance, such as energy efficiency?
• How do buildings impact humans, in terms of wellness and health?
• Considering 1 and 2, how can we how can we design better buildings?

Too many architecture projects that are “green” on paper, fail to live up to their predicted performance once occupied by real people. A better understanding of how occupants interact with buildings could help reduce the uncertainty associated with building performance upgrades, and remove this barrier preventing investment in better building design. 

In this course, students will also explore how architects can influence occupant behavior. This is an elusive yet weighty goal in terms of mitigating climate change and improving public health. Finally, students will investigate design concepts that encourage physical activity, improve indoor air quality, and impact other aspects of health, such as sleep quality and circadian rhythms. In short, students will seek to answer the question: how can we build positive human interactions with the spaces we design?

This studio examines the issue of sanitation infrastructure in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s informal settlements. The site is an informal settlement with an organized community group that will serve as the constituency or client group for the studio. The studio will work towards evolving a broader strategy for upgrading the entire settlement in situ. Sanitation infrastructure will serve as the instrument that guides the reorganization of the urban fabric relating to water supply, sewage and sanitation, as well as its relationship and integration with community spaces more broadly.

The studio engages with modes of governance, as well as implementation and financial models, which have the potential to make sanitation infrastructure viable and sustainable, and enable transformative effects in the larger landscape of informal settlements in Mumbai. Students will develop prototype projects, which may be implemented in the future. To this end, the studio will work collaboratively with the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) in Mumbai. The UDRI will host the students for the week in Mumbai and coordinate the research and investigations of the chosen site. The project is also supported by the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute (LMSAI), who will facilitate inputs from experts in other disciplines across the University.

The connections between health, well-being, and place are a complex. This class focuses on four topics that will be important in coming decades: a place, suburbia; a population, older people; a method, neighborhood health assessment; and an implementation strategy, multi-sectoral collaboration.

• Place: Suburbia is a key site for urban growth in coming decades and has provoked polarized opinions about its healthiness. The class will look beyond the hype to understand the strengths and weaknesses of this very diverse part of the metropolitan landscape.

• Population: The aging of the world’s population is an enormous challenge that will fundamentally reshape households, cities, and regions. The class will engage the shifting physiological and psychological dimensions of aging. This is an area of some innovation in terms of technology, housing forms, transportation options, and lifestyle options.

• Method: Understanding the healthiness of existing and proposed neighborhoods is an issue that is more contentious than it would at first appear as various health assessments start from different premises. The class will examine existing tools including health impact assessment, healthy community assessment, community health needs assessment, as well as various livability and sustainability tools. The course will also engage with an emerging kind of tool the neighborhood health assessment or audit.

• Implementation strategy: Because health and well-being are so multifaceted many propose collaborative models of implementing healthy places strategies including well-known approaches like healthy cities, age-friendly communities, and child-friendly environments. The course will unpack these approaches, asking how effective they really are.

In examining these topics students will also reflect on some larger questions. Can the way places are planned and designed improve health? What are the key health issues that should concern those in planning and related fields? Does the work of incorporating health issues into planning and design processes always add value? Is evidence-based practice really an improvement over business-as-usual? What is the relationship between the different approaches to incorporating health into planning and design practice: health assessments, built projects, regulations and policies, interagency coordination, and programs to change how places are used?